4 Ways of Looking at Breakfast

A closer look at the day's most important meal

As a Weapon of Mass ConstructionSumo wrestlers credit chanko-nabe—a chunky stew of vegetables, broth, noodles, and meat or seafood-for their girth. They down it as a late breakfast after training for several hours, and while it clearly bulks up the 300-plus pounders, the meaty mixture contains nothing controversial. (In fact, many restaurants in Japan serve a similar dish.) Protocol demands that junior grapplers cook the dish daily for the champs, who get first dibs. One famous wrestler is said to have consumed 65 bowls of it-that's about 29 pounds of beef-in a single sitting. Lucky for him, the next scheduled activity after chanko-nabe is a nap.

As a Marketing MarvelBreakfast cereal is now a $9 billion business. But back in the day, when John Harvey Kellogg set out on a national health crusade, cereal had a more select fan club. In the late 1890s, Kellogg and other Seventh Day Adventists cooked up the first batch of cornflakes in his Battle Creek, Michigan, laboratory, touting it as a cure for constipation. But breakfast-in-a-box really took off in 1949, after the chairman of Kellogg's happened to share a train ride with legendary adman Leo Burnett. Soon after, the men joined forces to market cereal directly to kids. Brightly packaged boxes helped—Norman Rockwell designed the one above, which hit store shelves in 1955—as did big spending on some of the earliest color TV commercials.

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As a Learning IncentiveWhen American kids eat breakfast, studies show, their test scores improve. In Third World countries, the morning meal has an even more pivotal role. In rural Cambodia, when a bowl or two of rice with split peas is provided first thing in school, children journey from miles away to learn. When free meals go away-as was the case for a month and a half last spring when rising rice prices forced the World Food Program to suspend its breakfast program—so do as many as one third of the kids. The students stay home, WFP program director Thomas Keusters explains, to search for frogs and crabs to eat instead.